<\/p>\n

My father walks through the scrub, a shortcut, to get to Walmart<\/p>\n

where he meets up with his friends for coffee on Friday afternoons.<\/p>\n

He says teenagers are always hanging around back there, barbequing<\/p>\n

something.\u00a0 I\u2019m assuming my father has never smelled pot<\/p>\n

and that\u2019s what he\u2019s smelling now, so I say, Dad, stick to the streets,<\/em><\/p>\n

because I am afraid for him, even though these kids<\/p>\n

are probably mellow from weed.\u00a0 My father, 80, says<\/p>\n

there are too many zooming cars on the road, and besides,<\/p>\n

he likes the pond, the wildflowers that will probably be gone<\/p>\n

when the plaza expands to a Super Walmart next year.<\/p>\n

I want to make sure the teenagers don\u2019t rob my father for his two dollars,<\/p>\n

the way they robbed my father-in-law right in the Albertson\u2019s bathroom,<\/p>\n

pushing him into the white tiled wall while he was at the urinal,<\/p>\n

then fleeing with his wallet.\u00a0 It took my father-in-law a long time to get up<\/p>\n

and regain his balance.\u00a0 It took him a long time to replace<\/p>\n

his credit cards and ID.\u00a0 He was 90 by then.\u00a0 My husband said,<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t you catch these kids on the surveillance camera?<\/em><\/p>\n

The manager was lazy and said the supermarket wasn\u2019t responsible.<\/p>\n

My husband said, No one is saying the supermarket is responsible\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

we just want an arrest so these kids can\u2019t mug anyone else.<\/em><\/p>\n

My father-in-law filled out a police report,<\/p>\n

his provisions idle in the silver cart.<\/p>\n

When the supermarket wanted my father to retire,<\/p>\n

they sent him to get the carts in the rain.\u00a0 Though there was a union<\/p>\n

to protect wages, employees had no fixed assignments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Having meat men suddenly clean bathrooms or produce men<\/p>\n

suddenly wash floors was one way management<\/p>\n

could humiliate older workers enough to make them leave.<\/p>\n

A grown man doing the work a teenager could.<\/p>\n

A grown man working 40 hours a week, eating up<\/p>\n

the supermarket\u2019s profits with his benefits.\u00a0 A teenager was warm inside,<\/p>\n

part-time, bagging, flirting with the cashier, maybe laughing<\/p>\n

at my father because my father wasn\u2019t the teenager\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

That would have been a different story all together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father walks through the scrub, a shortcut, to get to Walmart
\nwhere he meets up with his friends for coffee on Friday afternoons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-ducts","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4943,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4941\/revisions\/4943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}